We're All Made Of Stars
by Wiston Cap
Summary: Ecco's long journey reveals some strange sights to the star-child. Finished.


We're All Made of Stars  
  
By Debaser (u_hrair@hotmail.com)  
  
From as far back as he could remember, from the very day of his birth, possibly, Ecco, son of fair Echo, had been fascinated with those many bright points that shone up in the sky far, far above his head - the stars. His mother - that mysterious figure he could remember only as a warm shadow that took care of him and protected him from harm - had a dilly of a time keeping him with the pod, for the little calf was wont to fall behind, absorbed in his stargazing. A mooncalf, the elder singers of the pod laughed, and for a long time indeed that was the little bottlenose's psuedonym, among other, less-flattering things. Echo, desperate to make him pay attention, would sing him songs of many things in her lilting voice, and his very favourite of these had to do, not surprisingly, with - what else? - the heavens.  
  
Long, long ago, ages and ages long since past, a dolphin - possibly one of Ecco's long-dead ancestors - had done a man a good turn. The unfortunate human had fallen off one of the strange floating whales men sometimes used to move atop the waters (and they were haughty creatures, it was said, who would never respond to a song no matter how well-given or well-sung - completely hopeless) and the Ancestor had allowed the half-drowned creature to grasp onto his dorsal and thus dragged him to the shallows where he could find his footing and return to the Dry Side.  
  
No-one was quite sure why the Ancestor had done this, except the human in question had been unusual in one key way - before seemingly tumbling off in a fit of clumsiness, he had made the most wonderful sounds with his paws and mouth...almost like...singing. Of course that was a ridiculous notion; every proud singer in the ocean knew humans weren't capable of singing, but nevertheless, that was what the song told them, and since it was an ancient song none dared to change it.  
  
The most mysterious part of the tale, however, was contained in the final few verses. So pleased was the Ocean with this singer's good deed that he was sent to swim for all time in the Sea of Stars, far, far above the surface of the Dry Side, a wonderful place where neither Hungry One nor man with harpoon was ever allowed entry. And if you looked upward when the air was dim, you would know this song to be true - for was there not, plain as anything, the ancient Ancestor outlined by five points of light in the sky, swimming steadily across the far-distant Sea of Stars as the night progressed?  
  
This was an especial favourite song for Ecco, as for reasons no other singer could fathom he bore the same shining points on his brow. No-one, either in his own pod or any pod yet encountered, had ever seen anything like it, and there were many guesses as to what it could all mean. But, as time wore on and the little orphan slowly grew up, it was soon dismissed and forgotten most of the time. Ecco had performed no heroic deeds - nay, had shown no capabilities beyond that of any other singer in his pod. It was finally decided that the marks on his head must be of no more importance than the spots on the hides of the Mottled Ones, or the markings of a colourful clownfish.  
  
That was, of course, before the storm.  
  
Ecco would never, COULD never forget it; no matter how hard he tried, the moment of the whirlwind replayed time and time again in his mind. The star-brow had always loved a good storm, as did the rest of his pod, and they would leap in joyous unison to meet it, dancing and twisting amongst the whitecaps and deep troughs the wind made on the surface of the water, then diving down, down, down, far below the turbulance of the Dryside. They had no idea that on this occasion the storm would not let them escape so easily. How were they to know? And even if they had, could they have fled in time? There was no telling now, and no going back.  
  
A female cousin - he could never remember which afterwards - had, in playful jest, taunted him to jump his highest in the midst of the malstrolm. Ecco, never one to back down from a challenge, had just whistled laughingly back at her and replied that he could jump as high as any cow yet born, gale blowing or no, and proceeded to do so.   
  
The leap he made that day he always believed to have been his finest ever - not that it had mattered afterward. Up and towards the black clouds he had burst, through a driving rain...only to see, illuminated in a flash of white lightning, the snaking, swirling shape of the waterspout towering above him, roaring down on the bay with a sound like a thousand bull elephant seals screaming in unison. Before he was able to land and warn his family to flee for their lives, it was far too late; the tornado had landed squarely in the middle of Home Bay. Singers, fish, bits of coral and sand, clams and seabirds - everything in the area was sucked up into the mouth of the storm, Ecco included. The wind and the water lifted them higher and higher into the sky...and then, all at once, in another blinding flash of lightning, it stopped completely. Echo's son was deposited ungracefully back into the waters of his home along with all the other flotsam and jetsam stirred up by the storm, unconcious but alive.  
  
When he had woken the wind had been screaming over the waters of the home bay, churning the waves into whitecaps and froth and scuttling black clouds across the sky. Other than these signs and the debris left by the storm, there was no trace that anything had happened at all...except the eerie emptiness of Home Bay and the lack of any other singers in the area, that was. And so it began - the long journey.  
  
He was tired, so very tired. From the moment the cyclone ripped his family away from him, Ecco had known only one desire : to find them and bring them back safely. No matter how long the journey took, no matter how arduous, he would never stop until he found them...Well, at least this was what he had thought when he left Medusa Bay on that early morning some three moons ago. But it was one thing to pledge eternal, undying fealty to an endless quest and quite another to actually go through with it for the rest of your days, however many they may number. Singers were not made for endless, grim travels. They were made for riding the waves, chasing down the tasty little fish, and, of course, singing. They were not a sad race, as anyone who had ever seen a group of them playing on the horizon could attest to.  
  
The Starbrow had travelled long and hard since that long-ago morning, despite these facts, desperately questioning every singer he came across in his lonely travels. Many knew of the great storm, but none knew of his pod, and so, frustrated, he surged on, resting only when it was absolutely needed, eating his hastily-snatched fish on the move. He saw many things during this time, underwater vistas the sons of men would have paid greatly to view that the seagoing mammal simply took for granted. Murky blue-tinted canyons deeper and craggier than anything ever seen on the surface...vast open stretches of sea-grass waving in the underwater currents like rye caught in a praerie wind...thick forests of green kelp with the evening sunlight slanting down through their branches, refracted and broken-up into watery bars and ripples by the waves... All these was Ecco's.   
  
He didn't care. He could care less about the way the moonlight looked from below glinting on the waves; all he wanted was his family back, and the rest of it could go rot in the Moray Abyss. What good was a beautiful sunset if there was no-one to share it with?  
  
And he was tired, so tired.  
  
Truth be told, by the time he reached the Ridge Waters he was feeling a bit sorry for himself, which was to be expected. He had never asked to be a hero, and yet it seemed like every singer he had yet met had needed his help without being able to help him in return. It was a nice feeling to help lead one of his brother-singers out of some watery trap and burst out through the waves with them, the gratitude of the other members of the pod practically coming off them in waves, but it didn't help him find HIS family.  
  
The last pod-leader had had a bit more information about the mysterious 'Big Blue' the orca had mentioned however, and so he had continued swimming northward, the sun slowly sinking into the ocean to his left the farther along he swam. Exhaustion told him to stop and wait awhile, maybe even rest the night, but the parting words of the old pod matriarch jabbed him onward. He MUST reach the Big Blue before it was too late. If he didn't, the young singer was not sure at all of what he would do next, not sure at all...  
  
By the time Ecco finally reached the Ridge Waters, he was nearing the final stages of exhaustion. The farther he swam, the colder the water became, and Ecco was not of a northern pod so it went hard with him. Furthermore he had not seen a school of fish since he entered the area, and navigating through the maze of stone and shell and stingers that connected the two lagoons drained him even further. By the time he reached the second pool, he very well could have been hallucinating, which would have explained what he was soon to witness. He very well could have been...and then again, he could have not.   
  
Fluke-weary and tired in body and mind, the starbrow emerged from the maze. From the light that filtered into the pool he guessed that it was just after sundown; the water held an eerie purplish-blue glow from the faint afterlight of the sunset. None of that surprised him, though, he had seen it all before. What DID surprise him, however, was the sight of a great number of dolphins frolicking in the clear waters ahead.  
  
He had never seen a pod so large in all of his short life, not even his own, and for a moment he was too awed to venture to sing them down and thought he might slip away in the gathering gloom without attracting their attention. Then he realized that a pod this large would SURELY have some knowledge of what had become of his own family, and necessity made him bold. He approached the frolicking singers, determined to get the information he desired about all else.  
  
"He..Hello hello, friend singers, brothers!! I am Ecco, of the Home Bay Pod. The others of my family disappeared the night of a great storm; have you any knowledge of this happening? Have you seen them in your journeys?"  
  
And then he waited politely, as was the custom of the singers after asking a query; if there was one thing Ecco had been taught, it was good manners and wary respect for any pod bigger than your own. However, if he had expected a lengthy reply from this large band, he was sorely disappointed. It was as if he hadn't sung at all; not a head was turned and not an eye rested on the lonesome traveller. The large pod continued to leap and frolic in the waves, ignoring Ecco entirely, intent upon their races and their play.  
  
Puzzled and just a tiny bit put-out by the rudeness of this seemingly snobby bunch, Ecco tried again, this time in a louder, higher pitch than before. Surely he would get their attention this time!  
  
He did not. The reaction was the same as before; complete ignorance.   
  
"Keeee!! Can you not sing?? Do you not listen? Or are you too good to speak to a brother-singer, even if he IS a vagabond?? I will fight you if I must!! For this information that I seek I will fight you all - prepare yourselves, haughty ones!!"  
  
By this time his slight annoyance had turned to bitter anger - Ecco had always had a quick temper, and it had only gotten worse with the preceding month's stress - and he boldly made a charge for one, meaning to force a reaction, any reaction. It was a stupid move and could've meant the death of him if he had been forced into battle with the thirty some-odd members of the tribe, but that was not to happen this night.   
  
Instead of his beak meeting firm, smooth flesh, it met...nothing at all. The startled singer passed right through his target, whom reacted not at all and continued to frolic with his fellows.  
  
Ecco wheeled in the water, churning and upsetting it so in his panic and confusion that from snout to tailtip he was temporarily lost in a froth of bubbles. Great Delphinus, what were they?! So far on his journey Ecco had come up against some frightening things - Hungry Ones with razor teeth, swift currents that trapped him far below, even other singers fiercely defending their territory - but singers who would not communicate, would not fight, and were seemingly made of nothing more than the sea-foam...  
  
Ghosts.  
  
He noticed, with another twinge of uncertainty, that despite the fact that the pod frolicked and roughhoused and leapt as much as any group of dolphins he had ever seen, they made no sound at all; the entire area was deathly quiet. No splashing, no whistling and clicking, and above all, no singing. Every motion they executed was done under an eerie silence, and Ecco felt cold terror and an overwhelming awe fighting for dominance inside him.   
  
Spirits of the dead haunting the bay they had loved in life? Shades from the past being echoed back through time like an afterimage overlayed on the present? The hallucinations of a tired and stressed mind? Whatever they were, Ecco, despite the numbing fear that gripped him as he watched them play, found himself irrisistably drawn to them. It was almost hypnotic, the way they moved without a sound.  
  
Their graceful, silent ballet went on for a bit longer; then, one by one, they began to leap out of the water and dissappear. First one, then two, then three of the shades did this, and Ecco, overcoming his fear of the pod by sheer willpower alone, rose to the surface to see what was becoming of them.  
  
What he saw that night stuck with him long, long after, and later, when the little calves of the pod would come to the old warrior for a song, this was one of his favourites to tell them. He could never explain it, nor could any other living dolphin he ever met, but it really didn't matter. He had seen it happen with his own two eyes, and that was all that counted.  
  
The entire ghostly pod was swimming away, right into the evening sky. A singer would leap into the air, as if in play, and just...never come down, moving smoothly through the gloaming with his fellows as easily as if he or she had still been enveloped in the quiet waters of the lagoon. They continued to move noiselessly, and by this time it was evident they were made out of nothing of this earth; completely transparent were they, so much that you could see the first evening stars twinkling through their shadowy bodies. Up and up into the sky of the Dryside they went, higher and higher in the hazy grey-blue afterglow of the sunset, over the surrounding cliffs and out of sight. Towards the east they streamed, in the direction of the rising moon, what seemed like hundreds of them, although Ecco knew there couldn't have been more than thirty or so of them...but then again, these were no ordinary singers.   
  
And as he watched them flee the earth like a flock of shining birds, Ecco began to hear, for the first time since he swam into this haunted place...singing. Hundreds of dolphin voices crying to the Sea of Stars, beautiful songs, but also very, very sad, almost wistful. These birds could sing as well as fly, apparantly. The song called to the starbrow, urging him to join them, to swim to the stars with them, and the lonely dolphin would've given both pectoral fins if he could've answered the call...but all he could do was watch, sadly, as the song slowly faded out and the last of the spirits disappeared into the night, leaving Ecco no longer scared, but very, very alone.   
  
He drifted with his head out of the water for some time, staring after them. Then after awhle the young singer eased back under the waves and made slowly for the path out of the bay, continuing his lonesome search - under the stars, but sadly, not among them. 


End file.
